1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to software support mechanisms and, more particularly, to a computer implemented non-invasive networked-based customer-support method.
2. Background Description
The distribution of highly complex computer software necessitates more effective means of providing customer-support services. In some operating domains, the software provides a critical control function, the operation of which is highly dependent upon the current state of the operating domain. The user of such software may be, for example, a manufacturing facility where the software consists of scheduling applications designed to optimize and control the low-level operations of individual manufacturing devices. If the facility is remotely located, it may be more difficult to communicate information relevant to a particular problem to product support personnel. Existing methods for providing customer support have serious limitations. We discuss these briefly below:
a. Telephone Support
A user calls up a customer-support center and verbally describes the problem. The receiver may apply expertise (personal knowledge or reference to some database) to try to resolve the problem. This form of support is limited by virtue of its dependence on the user to effectively communicate a description of the problem as well as all relevant circumstances that may have created the problem. The advantage of this approach is that once contact with the customer support person is made, interaction is "real-time" in so far as it is possible to immediately respond to questions that arise either for the user or the product service technician.
b. Public Access to Problem Resolution Centers
A company may provide public access to some location whereby the user individually investigates the problem and attempts a resolution on their own. For example, many companies provide public access to a page on the World-Wide Web (WWW) with "knowledge bases" containing lists of frequently asked-questions. Such approaches to customer support are inexpensive but often fail to resolve problems resulting from rare contingencies or particulars of the operating environment.
c. Technical Service Visit
A company may provide personnel to visit a customer site in an attempt to resolve the problem on-site by performing a detailed investigation of the operating environment in which the product resides. This mode of customer service is expensive and still requires manual reconstruction of the state of the operating environment when the problem occurred.
d. Remote Terminal Display
In this mode of customer support, a network link to the user's monitor is made so that a customer-service personnel can see exactly what the user is seeing and even take over control of the terminal so as to perform diagnostic services. This approach may not reveal the underlying causes of a particular problem and may suffer from performance degradation due to limited network communication bandwidth.
All of these forms of customer support are invasive in that they require efforts on the part of the users of the software (their time and equipment, for example) to assist the customer-support technician. In continuous production environments, these types of support may thus be regarded as highly disruptive.